Long Drive Today

Today we did the long drive to Mt. Shasta, California. Strangely, the "Welcome to California" sign seemed to be missing. I guess they don't want visitors anymore. LOL

Maybe they drink too much water, because California was looking more like Africa to me. Everything dead but for stunted bushes.

OMG, it was so much tile. Really, until we saw it all together we didn't realize just how much tile I had bought. Luckily, we had the good sense to drive down there with a trailer even though we didn't want to. (The trailer added at least an hour to the trip each way.) We had a good solid layer in both the bed of the truck and in the trailer, plus a few boxes behind the seats in the cab.

My Winter Vacation

By Shasta
On my winter vacation I went to go visit my family in California. I had a lot of fun because we stayed with Grandpa who lived only a block from a great big grassy field where my alphas could take me to play. I got to see my cousins and they are much bigger now. They were puppies the last time I visited, but this time they were almost alphas.

I had a lot of fun going to the grassy field to play chuck-it everyday. One day we even went twice. The weather was very hot and I could not run for so long as I do at home in Oregon. But it was nice when we got to go.

My Grandma gave me lots of turkey scraps and my food was real yummy. I wish my alphas would give me more turkey scraps at home.

Uncle James liked it when I came over and chased stray cats out of his backyard. It was my best visit ever to see Uncle James! And Grandpa had a bunch of squirrels who got into his backyard and it was fun to chase them too.

I wish my alphas would spend less time on their funny grey boxes. They got new grey boxes for xmas and now they like them even more. They look at them for hours and hours and I don’t understand why they would rather look at them than play with me. Alphas are silly.

My Daddy went off a bunch of times to play D&D (whatever that is) with his friends. I am sure there must have been some other dogs involved.

One time I met a dog named Molly. She was sort of old and wasn’t too sure about having me around. I also met a cat and I liked her; she did not like me.

The drive was very long. I decided to take a nap because I was bored. I only got to get out of the car a couple of times, but then we got home again. I like it at home too (but I miss my turkey scraps).

There and Back Again

Last Friday, Jeff and I slipped out of town to visit family in California. We actually left earlier than we originally planned because the weather forecast was so bad for Saturday. The drive was really beautiful. You could actually see Mt. Shasta all the way to the top--there was no cloud cover! (That rarely happens.)We had quite the whirlwind of visiting with family and friends. The only thing that managed to slow us down was when we caught colds. But, otherwise, it was a really wonderful visit!

Then, today we risked the drive back up to Portland despite the likely event of snow. We were very lucky and never needed to use the chains. We did hit snowfall four times but the snow was never deep or heavy enough to require chains. The scenery turned out to be really spectacular! Everything is so pretty with a light frosting of snow.I think this is a cinder cone of Shasta, named Shastina. Mt. Shasta was totally obscured by cloud cover and we never saw more than the base.

Jeff Visiting Seattle

Jeff decided to go visit Seattle this weekend. One of his team members from Intel (way back when) is getting married up there tomorrow and Jeff thought it would be nice to visit. And since Erik lives there, it gives him an opportunity to have some friend time with Erik as well. Hopefully Jeff will share some photos when he returns.

Tonight, I'm trying to resist the lure of remodel "window" shopping and Netflix to spend my time getting caught up on my reading for classes. After nearly a week of blowing off my school responsibilities, I was starting to get behind.

California Trip Cancelled

Good News! I don't have to drive down to California to pick up my new prosthetic. UPS delivered it today!

I was planning to visit next week, but when I called for an appointment, the prosthetist told me he'd be out of town. Then I told him the next time I could visit would likely be the end of October. So, he basically gave up and shipped it to me! Yeah!

Though, unfortunately, now we need to figure out how to go get the bird child. Maybe Thanksgiving week because most of my classes have been cancelled that week. =)

This morning, I realized I had so much homework, I needed a way to keep track of it, so I made myself a spreadsheet. I went through all my syllabi and entered all the reading and homework assignments I could find. It was more than a page-long; 65 lines to be exact. And this doesn't even include homework that has yet to be assigned. I am keeping busy these days!

Long Drive Today

I drove back to California today with the dog child. Since Jeff flew home earlier in the week, I had to drive the whole way. I'm tired. At least the weather was beautiful and the scenery was nice. Mt. Shasta was even out from behind the clouds for a change, at least for part of the trip.

When I was passing through Albany, I stopped and looked at an entertainment cabinet. It's another Bentwood Furniture piece. I can't seem to help myself... =) This one is selling for something like ⅓ of the original price. It's very tempting. I'll have to see if I can sell our entertainment cabinet here in California; then we wouldn't have to move it all the way to Portland.

Back in Portland, OR

I am feeling much better this morning, after getting a chance to catch up on some sleep. We spent our first night in the new house last night and it was nice to wake up in our own bed. Here is our new bed, as always with Shasta in the photo. (She loves getting her picture taken!)

We had a very long day yesterday! We actually left California on Thursday evening at around 5:15PM. We stayed with my stepmother's parents in Redding, CA for the night. And while the traffic was absolutely horrendous getting out of the bay area at commute time, it was a huge relief to get 250 miles out of the way.

Yesterday morning Jeff woke up at 4:30AM and we decided to go ahead and slip out before our hosts woke up. (I hope that wasn't too rude; I left a note thanking them. I need to send them a thank you card.) Anyway, we got to Oregon a few minutes after 7AM!! Woo hoo!

I had one expedition I wanted to do yesterday morning, in Grants Pass; I wanted to visit the Bentwood Furniture Outlet Center while we were driving through town. Unfortunately, they didn't open until 9AM and we got to Grants Pass at 8:20! So, we went out and had a leisurely breakfast at a local cafe and took a bit of time to walk the dog, and we arrived at the outlet center a few minutes after 9.

Anyway, we wandered around their showroom and found some really beautiful pieces. I learned they have the best sales in mid-November when they conclude their season of road shows and they sell all those display pieces! I also learned they hold road shows at Costco and I got upcoming dates through the rest of the season. I'm definitely going to have to check out one of those shows! While I didn't buy any actual furniture pieces yesterday, I did buy a stain touch up pen to touch up these furniture pieces we've been buying used. And I've now got my eye on a set of tables for the living room and a curio for my dragon collection!

We finally arrived in Portland at around 3:00PM. We hired one of our basement repair guys to help us unload the furniture, so all the furniture is already in the house. He also helped us switch out the mattress from the mattress showroom, so we could actually sleep on the good mattress last night (we had a loaner mattress from the store).

Unfortunately, while I was running water to clean a sponge I was using to wipe down the dining room table, I discovered water pouring out of the sink cabinet! OMG, the drain pipe had broken into two pieces. Ugh. I had a huge mess and had to go dig through our luggage to find towels. Now, many of our towels are soggy and I don't have laundry machines yet. I'm going to have to go hunt down a place to do a load of towels. (I'll probably go visit Wendy and Ross and pick up stuff we've had shipped to their house.)

Also, as we set up our bed, we discovered we had forgotten to load the slats! Luckily, the bed rails have a ridge down their length, so we went off to Home Depot and bought cheap pine 1x4s and had them cut them to length. We'll use them until we bring our next load.

Since starting this post, our basement contractor sent over his fix-it guy and he is repairing our broken kitchen sink. So, by this evening all should be well.

Waiting to Go

I've got everything packed and I've finished everything on my list and I still have about an hour before I leave to pick up Jeff, so I figure I may as well do a quick blog entry.

I'm feeling much more stress this time; I'm not sure why. I'm not sure if I'm uneasy about the house purchase, or if I'm uneasy about Jeff quitting his job soon. It's pretty scary to cut our roots and just move, with no idea how it will turn out.

As far as the house, I've scheduled several appointments over the next 4 days. We have a full house inspection Saturday morning. On Monday we're meeting with Green Hammer Building Contractors to discuss the energy upgrades we'd like to do to the house. We want to seal it up tight with insulation and other energy saving upgrades. And we're hoping to redo the kitchen and add an attached bathroom upstairs.

Also on Monday, we have a Mason coming out to look at the crumbling brickwork to give us an estimate for repair. That one will help determine if we decide to call this house ours. On Tuesday, we are having someone come out and try and locate an old oil tank on the property. The sellers claim there never was one, but we want to be sure.

We still need to schedule a sewer scope, but I figure we can probably wait until after the inspection. If the inspection shows us some very serious problems, then we'll pass on this house. The price, frankly, isn't cheap enough if there are major problems. But we're not seeing them, so it may be fine.

I did go off galavanting to Monterey yesterday. On the way, I dropped Shasta off at boarding in Santa Cruz. It was a lovely drive and we had beautiful weather. It's probably just as well I went out and looked first, because I didn't end up buying the set. The furniture was exactly the brand and finish I was hoping, but the sellers only had a headboard for the queen size bed. They didn't have the footboard or rails. I was very disappointed; I like the finished furniture look of the footboard. The seller seemed pretty disappointed, too. While I was there, I even called the furniture company to get a price for the missing pieces and they said $700! Seriously? $700? In this economy? Anyway, it turned this good deal into not such a good deal, so I passed. At least I had a nice day with my Mother. =)

I finally had time this morning to take a long walk with my walking buddy, Heather. We actually walked 2 miles from her house to Hobee's for breakfast and then back again. It was a nice walk and I'm glad I got a chance to visit with Heather again. After breakfast, I spent the rest of the day working through my To Do list getting ready to go. I hope we're not forgetting anything!

During this trip in Portland, we're staying with our friend who doesn't have a wireless connection, so we'll be mostly offline until Tuesday night. We may sneak over to the Multnomah Library to use their connection, but we won't have it at the house. I'll let you all know how it goes as soon as I can.

Counter Offer on Multnomah

Surprisingly, the sellers countered our offer, so I guess their original offer wasn't so much better than ours! We originally offered $380K firm. But they countered at $395K. We discussed rejecting it just on the principle of the thing, but we countered with $385K. We're ready to be done house shopping.

They officially have until tomorrow at 3PM to answer our counter, but based on their last answer, they don't worry about those time limits so much so it could be later in the week. I'm quite sure the sellers are trying to work the other buyers to get their price up, so who knows what will happen.

We're getting much better at not getting our hopes up when we make offers. We are already discussing for which house we should make the next offer, sad to say.

We did our grueling 12.5 hour drive again today. It went fairly well. We were both tired from getting to bed much too late last night and we're both nursing mild colds. But luckily the trip was uneventful. Though the weather was odd. It was nice in Oregon, then started raining when we crossed over into California. Then it pretty much rained the whole rest of the trip. It's good to be back to our own bed where we can sleep with our dog child!

Beautiful Drive to Portland

We set off this morning at 5:31AM from Redwood City, CA. We drove pretty much straight through to Portland, OR and we arrived at 5:29PM! We had to stop for gas twice and we grabbed a quick BBQ lunch in Roseburg.

Shasta was a perfect dog child. She mostly slept the whole way, except for once when she asked us to stop at the next rest stop.

The weather around Yreka, CA was absolutely beautiful! Mt. Shasta was hiding behind the clouds, unfortunately.

Safe Trip Home

As expected, due to the snow, we didn't get off back to California until Thursday morning. We set off at 5:19AM.

We had a lot of rain until we got down to Southern Oregon then we had fog. We reached the pass at around noon and while there was snow on the sides of the road, it was mostly clear with some rain and we did not require chains. Yah! We finally arrived back in Redwood City at around 5:40PM.

Our Shasta baby was a wonderful traveller.

Since it was New Years Eve, we ended up going to my brother's house last night for dinner and a movie. We had a very long day.

Luckily, this morning we got to sleep in. Today, we've spent the day recovering from our trip. I've done laundry and cleaning, etc. and we're looking forward to a productive weekend. We're planning to move all the excess boxes sitting around the house into the garage. Maybe we'll finally be able to get this place cleaned up and be able to host guests. That would be nice!

Lots of House Shopping

Well, we heard back on Sunday night that the sellers of 64th took another offer. Boo hoo, we didn't get another house that we wanted. Oh well, I've heard that the sale is contingent on another house sale closing, so maybe it will end up back on the market sometime in the future.

We spent lots of time this week looking at houses. We found several that were almost what I wanted. =)

There was a nice historic house on Stark, right across from Laurelhurst Park, that was the victim of an unfortunate remodel. That's too bad--because we adore Laurelhurst Park.










I think we're going to go back to California this time and just keep watching online. Hopefully something will be listed this spring that is a short walk to Laurelhurst Park. I think I may just come back up when I see something hit the market that looks interesting.

This afternoon, while finishing up the last of our house hunting, it started snowing. And it ended up snowing quite a lot, especially considering that snow didn't seem to be in the forecast. I think we had about 4" out here in Hillsboro; at least according to some of my facebook friends. There were a lot of accidents on the highway on our way home.We had been planning to drive back to California tomorrow, but given the weather, I think that plan is going to be changed.

Quick Visit to Southern California

Jeff and I had a quick visit with his parents and sister.

We left Friday late morning and it took about seven hours to get there. We goofed off too much on the way; we stopped at too many fruit stands and, so, unfortunately we got stuck in the absolutely horrid L.A. Friday night commute. It took us two hours to go the final 40 miles.

I was surprised at how many trucks filled with tomatoes we saw during the trip. I kept trying to take pictures but we were all moving so fast.

We helped Jeff's mother, Marianne, pack up all of the their bookcases and sift several boxes. We brought home a secretary that we used to have in our house in Oregon and a few other boxes of stuff from Jeff's parents. Not sure where we're going to put it all.

Last night we got to visit Jeff's sister, Joy, and her family; we saw three of her six kids. It was nice to visit them all again; it's been so long. Her 13-year-old son, Jeremiah is absolutely huge. He's probably more than six foot tall and he's got the build of a football player.

We also dropped by Brad and Marianne's new retirement community and wandered around to see their new digs. It looks like a fabulous place to live--it has a craft studio, bistro, library and a lot of other great hang out spaces. I'm hoping we can afford such a nice place when it's time for us to move into a retirement community. They're going to be living across the street from Disneyland!

Today was Jeff's mother's birthday so we stuck around until lunch time and went and dined with them. We got on the road by 1:20. We made good time until we hit the narrow portion of Pacheco Pass and there must have been an accident because we practically coasted for several miles.

Luckily, we managed to retrieve Shasta before the 9PM deadline. It's good to have her back.

Next Oregon Visit

Our plan to visit Portland at Thanksgiving fell through. Our friends who we usually stay with were all busy, so we had to reschedule. Now we're going to head up north right after I get out of school in December. We'll probably be leaving here on December 19, but if Jeff can take Friday off, we'll head up on December 18.

We'll probably stay nearly until New Years, if our friends are around to visit.

Latest Mini-Trip Travel Plan

Jeff and I have started talking about taking a six-week road trip next year. Okay, so we cannot afford to take a year off in this crummy economy, but that doesn't mean we need to stay at home until things recover. So, we've started talking about taking a six-week trip next year. We're hoping he can take that much time off from work (four weeks would be unpaid), but we're not entirely sure Apple will let him go for that long.

Anyway, we're thinking about covering about 5,000 miles in that time, which may be way too much for only six weeks. Our preliminary thoughts are to drive out to Yellowstone and spend a couple of days. Then drive out to Chicago, IL and return to California along the old Route 66. We would manage to see at least some of the country, and it may help us decide whether we're really cut out to live and travel in an RV for a year. This would be practice for that year-long trip we want to take. =)

Here's the preliminary map:

View Larger Map

And here is our Google Map that we'll continue to update as we add (and subtract) cities. Hopefully this will work out; we'd love to go.

View Revised Short Trip in a larger map

We're initially thinking about beginning this trip in September 2010. (Who wants to travel across the middle of the US in the summer?) I don't know if this would be in our car or rented RV. And we don't know if Shasta will join us or not. We haven't gotten that far in the plan. Now that we have a preliminary plan, Jeff will approach his boss with the idea and ask for permission to take the time.

Change of Direction, Again

Many of our friends who have followed our activities since we moved from Oregon in April 2006 will now be used to us changing the plan. Well, due to the calamitous drop in our mutual funds we are not going to be able to afford to go off for a year-long vacation. We still hope to do some sort of extended traveling over the next few years, but we don't have enough dollars now to spend on an RV rig and the trip and then have enough afterwards to buy a house. Like many, we wish things had gone differently.

The sad thing is, we saw this drop coming and pulled a bunch into cash, just not enough. We thought the economy would get bad, but we were really off the mark in what kinds of assets would fall. We thought we had invested well for the coming tough economy; we didn't, nearly everything has crashed far more than we expected. Oh well.

Anyway, I guess our big adventure is now the big decision of where to settle; I guess we need to change the name of this blog. We are, of course, first looking in Oregon. We are looking at Portland, Salem, Corvallis and Eugene, for starters. We're trying to decide whether we try and find a house and then look for a job, or whether we do the opposite.

I spent yesterday looking at the houses in all four cities and found little to tempt me to buy the house first. Unfortunately, our Forest Grove "castle" has made me very picky about what houses I'm willing to buy. And there is precious little on the market right now that makes me want to run up and take a look. It's hard to decide what to do. Of the many houses supposedly "move in ready" I often don't like their cabinetry or flooring or other expensive finish. And if we buy a fixer, then we run the risk of turning it into another "money pit" like we did with Forest Grove and we overbuild the neighborhood. And we don't have anything like those resources this time around. (Gotta love tech bubbles during remodels.)

What we'd really like to do is build a house. We'd like to build a house that is VERY energy efficient and is built with some sort of alternate building technique like rammed earth or strawbale. But if we build from scratch, then we're going to pay a premium and likely go way over our budget. And land is still very expensive; the drop in demand hasn't quite registered in land prices as far as we can tell. Though, maybe prices were much higher a couple of years ago. Anyway, we'd like to build, but probably cannot afford it, not without running through all our non-retirement savings. And we cannot afford to build a house like that until we know where we'll be working because we run the risk that we'll find the job in another city too far to commute to and then we'll have to sell at a loss.

So, our current plan is to poke around the housing market in Oregon and see if any used house tempts us to just buy it. If not, then when Jeff leaves in April or so, we're going to rent some sort of temporary housing (maybe furnished corporate housing or hotel room), and stay in the different cities for a time while we look for employment. We can see if anything pops up for either of us job wise. It will be easier to interview for positions (and more likely that we'll get called for an interview) when we're in the same state. Once one of us finds a job, then we can rethink the building plan.

If Jeff manages to land a part-time teaching position at either Oregon State University or University of Oregon, then we'll probably both go back to school for some additional education. Bad economies are the perfect time to upgrade your education, in particular if you get subsidized tuition. =)

Depressing Financial Discoveries

I have had growing unease about the expense of our grand year-long trip and so this morning I revisited all of our cash, investment and retirement accounts and tallied what we have left after the last devastating six months. And it was bad...real bad.

We sold our house in Forest Grove in April 2006 and walked away with our home equity. At the time it seemed smart to put about half of it in cash (state bond funds and treasuries) and the rest in the stock market. That was clearly a mistake, looking back. I guess we should have known better since we realized we were in a bubble. But there was really no "safe" place to put it and we expected to buy a house by now. I wasn't about to pull it all out of the banks and stick it in our mattress.

Anyway, we have basically lost the money we took away from the Forest Grove house, when you take in to consideration all of our losses, including all the retirement accounts. Oh well. Looks like we'll be working for a lot more years than we had hoped. And with safe savings accounts paying 0%, there's not much chance what we have left of our savings will grow anytime soon. I guess all our years of responsible financial behavior was a mistake. We should have been spending it all, and then some, then the government would be bailing us out right now, so we could keep our McMansion from foreclosure, instead of screwing us over.

Maybe we need to rethink this trip plan.... Luckily, we did stick a fair amount of money in cash, but if we go and blow it on this extravagant vacation then we won't have much of anything left for a house when we're done. And there's no guarantee that we'll be able to find jobs either. (Oregon's job market is crumbling along with the rest of the economy.)

So, now we're debating about what to do, again. Believe or not, we are as tired as all of you of our constantly changing plan. Sigh.

Quilt Tops Done, Done, Done

This morning I finally finished the border on the third quilt for my nephews and niece. Yah! So, now I am going to take those three quilts, plus my dragon lap quilt, up to Portland with me to have them machine quilted. Hopefully the machine quilter won't be so busy that he can't get to them fairly quickly, because if he is, they'll just end up staying up there until I can make it back in a few weeks.

I am going to try and finish loading the trailer today. It's pretty hard to make sure all of our SCA gear is packed and in the trailer because, really, we have it everywhere throughout the house. I was hoping to get off early tomorrow, but Jeff threw out his back and hasn't been able to help me with the loading and we've been busy with social visits. So, if we don't manage to get the trailer loaded tonight after work, then I won't go until Friday.

I plan on doing some fifth wheel shopping while I am in Oregon. Today, I am also trying to pull my list together of RVs I want to go look at. It's going to take some organizing, because I have piles of craigslist ads all over the place. I'll probably spend several days driving around looking at new and used RVs. If I don't find one up there on this trip, we'll go ahead and buy the one I like here (assuming it's still available) and have it shipped up to Oregon.

I am grateful for our friends up in Oregon who are kindly housing me/us during visits, storing our considerable amount of stuff during the trip and allowing us to borrow their address during our adventure--Thanks!

Finishing up the last Quilt

Well, I have decided making four quilts in less than two months is too many! I like quilting, but I'm seriously tired of piecing these borders. But, I'm planning to go up to Portland, Oregon later in the week and I'd like to bring these quilt tops with me to get them quilted. I finally dragged myself into my sewing room this afternoon, and managed to finish up two of the edges on the blue quilt. I'm planning to finish the other two edges tomorrow.

An SCA friend dropped by tonight to borrow some SCA-related reference books while we're on the trip. She is borrowing six large file boxes of books. I'm still surprised I'm letting them go, but it's not like I'll be using them. =)

I'm not looking forward to driving the trailer to Oregon, but it needs to happen before our trip and I'm the only one with time and no job. I'm not very confident driving such a long load, but hopefully it will be good practice for our fifth wheel. I hope I never have to back up, because I really cannot do that. I'll only be stopping at pull-through truck stops along the way.

Great Time in Corvallis

We've had a really good time in Corvallis. We really like the town. It's small enough to feel like a small town, but big enough to have most of the stores "in town" that you might need. Jeff got quite adept at navigating the downtown grid.

Yesterday, after getting the car fixed and driving around town for quite a while, we actually went and looked at two houses for sale. Sharon just couldn't help it--they were too cool to miss....

We spent today walking around the downtown area, checking out the local shops. I don't know why, but we bought quite a few books. You'd think with our current plan, that buying books would be out of the question, but I guess old habits are hard to break. =) We love buying books.

We've gone to a number of local restaurants, they were all quite good and affordable, another good thing about college towns--cheap food!

We've had nice weather here, and we've been having a good time. Tomorrow we'll be heading down to Eugene, for AnTir's 12th Night. We're looking forward to visiting with old friends.